DESCRIPTION: The proposed pilot effort is designed to investigate the neurological underpinnings of behavioral components that contribute to normal phonological processing. The application includes three specific aims: 1) to address the hypothesis that separate phonological lexicons exist for processin and production, 2) to determine functional links between posterior and anterio brain regions during phonological tasks, and 3) to investigate the hypothesis that the phonological lexicon may be accessed both directly and indirectly via lexical semantics. The principal investigator proposes to use fMRI to investigate correlates of brain function during tasks designed to tease apart aspects of phonological processing and production. Ten tasks that reflect a theoretical hierarchy of phonological skills, from nonword discrimination (sublexial phonological processing) to synonym generation (semantic access) ar proposed. Tasks involve either auditory processing alone or processing plus silent generation of words. Ten subjects (5 male, 5 female) will be asked to respond, via button press, to processing tasks and will silently generate word in the production tasks. Ten 5 mm axial images acquired with a spiral scannin sequences are planned in order to allow visualization of anterior and posterio regions likely to contribute to phonological and semantic processes.